Performance (Narrative) Evaluations Advisory Guidelines on ...

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ

November 2001

Committee on Educational Policy

Advisory Guidelines on Writing Undergraduate Performance (Narrative) Evaluations

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 2. Senate regulations regarding performance evaluation 3. Examples of performance evaluation 4. Who reads performance evaluations? 5. Consistency and thoroughness 6. What is and is not acceptable content? 7. Mapping adjectives to grades 8. The coursework description field 9. The question of timeliness 10. Closing remarks

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For help designing your evaluations, for questions, or to learn about using a software approach to write evaluations,

please contact Rebecca Peet, Evaluations Consultant 459-1573 or rpeet@ucsc.edu.

9. The question of timeliness

As the instructor of record, you are responsible for providing a performance evaluation for every student receiving credit in your course and for doing so in a timely fashion (see regulation 9.2.2 on page 3). When evaluations are not written, students are deprived of important feedback on their performance, they and their academic advisors/preceptors are deprived of evaluations for academic standing review, honors and awards, and student applications to graduate programs and professional schools may be compromised.

10. Closing remarks

UCSC is unique in the University of California system, and amongst major research universities in the nation, in providing written performance evaluations to students ? a key aspect of our continuing commitment to undergraduate education. The continued vitality of our performance evaluation system relies on the faculty's willingness to use the system to their best advantage by authoring evaluations that are accurate, meaningful, and readable, but which do not unduly tax the instructor or require an alteration in her/his pedagogy. Used properly, the written performance evaluation system should not be a burden, but rather a tool in teaching. Experiment, talk with colleagues, examine the many example evaluations in this document and, most important, let the system work for you and your students.

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1. Introduction

In the year 2000, UCSC adopted a revised student evaluation system that added mandatory letter grades, previously a student's option, to the existing performance evaluation system. This revision established a parallel system of letter grades and GPAs at UCSC. It did not replace written performance evaluations nor did it modify that system or its scope. Written performance evaluations continue to anchor a system that encourages students and instructors to get to know one another, that allows instructors to acknowledge and document the full range of student achievement, and that can provide much more information than do conventional transcripts.

Almost from the founding of the campus, UCSC has used written performance evaluations to evaluate student performance, rather than relying solely on conventional letter grades. This practice reflects our conviction that the results of higher education cannot be adequately summarized in a single, one-dimensional measure, namely an A, B, C, D or F. Our performance evaluation system has proven valuable to students and the faculty and is viewed in retrospect by many of our alumni as one of UCSC's most valuable features.

Research indicates that students' understanding is promoted by environments that prioritize learning goals and evaluate performance in ways that are closely tied to processes of learning and instruction (see the National Academy of Sciences report: "How People Learn," 1999). Viewing a situation as an opportunity for learning?as opposed to merely a validation of ability?induces students to choose more challenging tasks, persevere in the face of difficulties, perceive instructors and peers as resources rather than as potential obstacles, and develop long-term interest.

According to many UCSC students and graduates, this form of assessment can help students distinguish their strong and weak areas and detect patterns in their performance across quarters. It can focus their efforts on improvement, encourage them to go

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beyond expectations, and help them learn to collaborate, creating an intellectual culture in which students with different talents and perspectives learn to respect differences rather than compete with one another along a single dimension of performance.

In order for the performance evaluation system to flourish, it is important for instructors to understand the system and to find ways of writing evaluations that work for them in their courses. The performance evaluation system acknowledges the tremendous variations of classroom environments, evaluation strategies, and logistic concerns from course to course across our campus. The performance evaluation system presents a set of tools that are flexible, individual, and powerful. It does not impose stylistic uniformity, nor does it mandate uniform expectations of instructors. Rather, it offers each instructor the means to evaluate students as best fits the course and the student. This guide details the performance evaluation system at UCSC and provides helpful tips, some recommendations, and a catalog of sample student evaluations. The latter are intended to document the rich variety of written evaluation possible within the performance evaluation system and to offer ideas and templates for evaluation writers.

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Grade P/NP Adjectives

A

P Honors, superb, outstanding, excellent, top-notch

B

P Very good, quite good, above average

C

P Average, satisfactory, fairly good, passing

D* NP Below average, marginal

F

NP Poor, inadequate, inferior, unsatisfactory

*At UCSC the grade of D results only in credit toward the requirement of 180 credit

hours for graduation; courses for which the student receives a grade of D do not count toward major, minor, or college requirements or for general education. There is no C-; students whose work is passing, but below C in quality receive a D. The choice of adjectives in the evaluation should be consistent with the grade of D.

8. The coursework description field

The instructor may choose to write a brief description of the coursework that the Registrar inserts at the beginning of each student's evaluation. This is information about the classwork that is applicable to all students in the class and does not vary from student to student. Typical content includes the scope of the course, textbooks used, a breakdown of assignments and exams, etc. In larger classes, the coursework description is well used to document the basis of student evaluation. You may wish to include the average grade or median score for the class as a powerful hedge against grade inflation. You should usually avoid simply quoting the catalog description of the class which is available on the web.

The Committee on Educational Policy imposes a limit of 60 words on coursework descriptions. Although this may seem restrictive, it must be remembered that a student's transcript is an evaluation of that student's work, not a series of expansive coursework descriptions written by instructors with understandable pride.

CEP recommends that you revise your coursework description with each offering of the course.

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Student ability, health, physical or learning disabilities, religious and political beliefs, and the like, are never considerations in student assessment and have no place in performance evaluation. Students have the right to initiate grievances for performance evaluations that they feel are based on criteria other than academic performance or that apply academic criteria in an arbitrary or capricious way that does not reflect student performance in relation to course requirements. The student grievance procedure can be found in Appendix C in the Manual of the Santa Cruz Division Academic Senate: .

The explicit mention of letter grades in performance evaluations is permitted. Given the near universal character of letter grading systems, inclusion of a letter grade or grades in an evaluation may provide a compact and potentially precise summary of student performance. However, letter grades are single-dimensional indicators of student performance and are inherently limited. Furthermore, performance evaluations can counteract the effects of grade inflation. CEP recommends that you bear these considerations in mind when using letter grades in written evaluations (see also section 8). CEP further recommends that you respect the decision of students who have chosen to enroll on a P/NP basis by avoiding mention of a letter grade in the performance evaluation.

7. Mapping adjectives to grades

The majority of students in a course will receive a letter grade at the end of the quarter. At the end of the quarter, it is important that the performance evaluation be consistent with the summary letter grade. The following table will help you choose adjectives that are consistent with the grade assigned. These rough correspondences have emerged as the consensus of a large number of UCSC faculty and are consistent with Systemwide regulations. The list is not exhaustive, and many other descriptors are appropriate.

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2. Senate regulations regarding performance evaluation

9.2.1 At the end of the term, each instructor teaching a creditgranting course shall prepare a written evaluation for each student who receives a grade of P, A, B, C, or D in his or her class. The narrative evaluation must evaluate the quality and characteristics of the student's performance in the class.

9.2.2 Evaluations are to be filed with the Registrar and the student's college at the time of filing the end-of-term course reports or no later than 15 working days after the close of the term.

These regulations can be faithfully redacted as follows: The instructor of record must submit a performance evaluation for each undergraduate student who receives credit for the course. The evaluation must describe, and is limited to, the quality and characteristics of the student's work. It is due 15 working days after the end of the quarter.

With the exception of excluding clearly inappropriate material, the only requirement on evaluations' content set by Senate regulations is that they describe the "quality and characteristics of the student's work." No list of characteristics is provided, nor is there any expectation determining length, thoroughness, or specific content. The decision on how best to describe the quality and characteristics of student work is yours. You may decide to write highly individual evaluations of each student. You may decide to use a spreadsheet macro to transform your grade sheets into descriptive text or to drive menus and grids. Performance evaluations may simply state the grade received, they may go further and contextualize the grade awarded the student, or they may be more synthetic. It is left to the instructor of record to decide what form of evaluation is most efficient, effective, and appropriate for your course and your students.

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3. Examples of performance evaluation

To demonstrate the flexibility and power of performance evaluations, we offer the following examples. The course title is in bold face; course descriptions are in italic face. A longer list of sample evaluations can be found in the appendix, available online at: .

________________________________________________________________ Example #1: Elementary Latin The first quarter of Latin forms and syntax, using the Smith and Jones textbook. Evaluation based on class participation, quizzes, midterm and final examinations.

Grasp of Forms: Very Good Grasp of Syntax: Good Skill in Translating: Very Good General Comments: Ms. Slug worked hard and the results were obvious. She needs only to tighten her knowledge of syntax a bit more. This was a B performance. ________________________________________________________________ Example #2: Introductory American Politics

Ms. Slug produced good work in the class by the end of the quarter. Her work showed marked improvement on both the short essays and the midterm and final exams. Her early essays were adequate, but did not always show a grasp of the material; her final essay, however, was of excellent quality, well argued and smartly written. Her midterm was quite an uneven effort. She easily passed the first half of the exam but failed to complete the essay portion. On the final, by far the most difficult exercise, Ms. Slug acquitted herself nicely. She demonstrated a competent grasp of the material necessary for an understanding of American political development. Aside from some minor conceptual confusion at the outset, the paper was a fine synthesis of course materials. Ms. Slug attended and participated in sections regularly, and gave a fine oral presentation of a chapter in Shell's Time of Illusion. ________________________________________________________________ Example #3: Introductory Physics

Overall Grade: B+ Performance on comprehensive final: Very good. Performance on midterm exams: Very good. Performance on homework: Excellent ________________________________________________________________

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each student personally. Some students will make the effort to establish a fuller relation with you; others will not. As a result, you will find that the level of commentary you are able to provide in performance evaluations will vary from student to student. This raises an important question: should you restrict yourself to indicators of student performance that are universally shared by students (such as test scores, evaluations of written work, etc.) or can your evaluations vary? This is for you to decide: Senate regulations afford you complete authority in determining the degree of consistency and thoroughness of performance evaluation. In making this determination, however, there are a number of factors you may wish to consider. Do you wish to acknowledge student effort at developing a fuller line of communication with you? Have you strayed from evaluating performance to commenting on personality? Will your comments be understood by the student and other readers? Regardless of class size, remember that it is the quality of the evaluation that is important, not its length.

6. What is and is not acceptable content?

Evaluations describe the quality and characteristics of student performance in the class. Comments not germane to student performance are not acceptable in performance evaluations. For example, "Student A is very bright but did not commit sufficient effort to this course" does not document performance and is, at best, conjecture. It is better to let the student's work speak for itself, for example, "Student A's work was mixed. Two papers were highly insightful and superbly crafted while the other two were sloppily assembled and cursory." Similarly, "Student B did not do well on the midterm as the result of a severe case of flu" is not acceptable. You may think that providing personal information (flu) puts a poor performance into a more favorable context, but a potential employer might not agree. We recommend substituting the phrase, "circumstances beyond his/her control," in cases where you think such explanation is absolutely necessary.

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